Real Estate: Not Your Father's Retirement

It's a marketing pitch that's changed with the times. At Festival, Del Webb's newest Phoenix-area community, the homes themselves have been reconfigured to suit boomers' need to live large. The biggest houses will be 2,849 square feet, with stainless-steel appliances, 10-foot ceilings and granite countertops. At the Sage Center for Wellness and Higher Learning, the neighborhood's clubhouse, there will be fitness equipment and swimming pools, but as at other recent Del Webb communities, much of the focus will be on "soft amenities": cooking classes, yoga and core training sessions, and even "adventure programming" that includes white-water rafting and skydiving. To complement the physical activities, there will also be programs that target boomers' brains, including extension courses offered on-site through a partnership with Arizona State University. As the new community fills up, residents will be able to choose from classes like Religion and Conflict, Beginning Guitar or Introduction to Murder, a course about trial strategy taught by a former homicide prosecutor and judge. It's a sign that while 20th-century retirees obsessed over golf handicaps, next-gen oldsters are more focused on mental acuity. "People are concerned that their mind and body both reach the finish line at the same time," says Deborah Blake, a Pulte's Del Webb VP.

Not every resident will have free time for those activities. In the most dramatic shift from traditional retirement communities, 42 percent of today's buyers plan to continue working. They're people like Linda Jane Austen, 59, who plans to move in next year at Festival beside her sister Susan Pullen, 62. Austen is education director at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, and Pullen works at a behavioral health facility. Both are selling their existing homes and will use the proceeds to pay for their new ones, which will cost $235,000 and $280,000, respectively. (Like half of all Del Webb buyers, they will move in with little or no mortgage debt.) Buyers like them who plan to continue working ask different questions than traditional retirement-home buyers, such as "How's the commute?" To beat traffic, Austen figures she'll work at home each morning before heading to the office.

As builders pound together these new residences, industry watchers debate whether boomers will really buy in. "The age-old question in our business is, 'Will the boomers truly be different, or will I become my father?' " says Dave Schreiner, who runs Pulte's active-adult business. He cites company surveys that make him optimistic: 47 percent of boomers ages 51 to 60 said they "definitely or likely would consider moving to an active-adult community," and outside data from groups like the National Association of Realtors show similar results. Still, there are doubters who figure baby boomers have spent a lifetime rejecting whatever their parents once embraced. Peter Francese, demographic-trends analyst at Ogilvy & Mather, says: "In my view those developments will hold vastly less appeal."

One major change since previous generations retired is that people no longer have to move to Arizona or Florida to find an amenity-rich retirement community. Despite the popular image that great masses of retirees typically do so, says Wake Forest demographer Charles Longino, author of "Retirement Migration in America," relatively small percentages--less than 5 percent--of people over 60 typically move out of state. Even though boomers are wealthier, healthier and better traveled--all key predictors of retirement relocation--so far there's no evidence that they'll move more or less than their parents did, he says. So to hedge their bets, builders have diversified, building active-adult communities in places far from the sun belt. Del Webb, for instance, will be selling homes in 20 states--including chilly locations like Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts--by the year-end.

Even as retirement beckons, some boomers will not only want to stay in the same region but in their current house. For them, a key concern is how it will accommodate their aging bodies. Dave Heinlein, a 57-year-old retired builder in Portland, Ore., is about to begin a large renovation of his bathroom. Because he has bad knees, he's ordered a more-accessible shower with a built-in seat (it can also accommodate grab bars and a wheelchair ramp someday), a less slippery floor and a "comfort-height" toilet. To do the job, he's hired In Your Home, a Lake Oswego, Ore., business that specializes in remodeling homes for older people. Co-owner David Dickinson says bathrooms are the most popular revamp, but his team also widens doorways, builds ramps, installs lever doorknobs, enhances lighting (to help aging eyes), subcontracts for elevator installation and sells several versions of those "I've fallen and I can't get up" alarm systems. While many clients call after a life-changing incident--like a broken hip--some, like Heinlein, are still relatively young but anticipate the frailties they'll encounter in years to come. "They're saying, 'What do I need to do to this house to be happy here for the next 30 years?' " Dickinson says. As a result, the National Association of Home Builders says "aging-in-place" renovations may become a $20 billion-a-year business within a few years.

For boomers willing to leave their current digs, one popular move is to sell their suburban homes and relocate to smaller spaces downtown, which puts them closer to jobs, cultural and culinary offerings, as well as public transportation. With their third child off to college, this year Boston architect Peter Madsen, 61, and his wife, Betsy, 59, sold their home in suburban Brookline and moved into a Beacon Hill town house. Now they amble to the theater, walk or take the subway to work, and Peter bikes to the gym. Some weeks, he says, "the only time I'm in my car is to move it on Wednesday night for street cleaning."